last ghost of the day
by strangesmallbard
Summary: "regina mills is thirty-eight years old, twenty-nine years removed. twenty-eight of those, no, eighteen of those years, were still. every morning she put on a pea coat, smiled like a glint off a sword, and set out for the day." regina centric introspective thoughts, swan queen.


regina mills is thirty-eight years old, twenty-nine years removed.

twenty-eight of those, no, eighteen of those years, were still. every morning she put on a pea coat, smiled like a glint off a sword, and set out for the day. there were timid mary margarets and unconscious davids and reginas with new sweaters and new insults and this new, shiny world that was supposed to give her something as repentance for all the years of taking and all the ways she had to change in order to cope.

eighteen years into the curse, there was a baby boy who looked at her with big, round eyes, and she trembled as she held him because of all the times she saw cora in her reflection, but she thought maybe she could forgive the universe if it would let her have this.

twenty-eight years in, he let go of her hand and the charmings won again and she tried and she tried and she tried to be good, their good, but now she's at the town line and robin hood is gone, with his wife, with his son. she didn't even love him but she almost forgave the universe again.

(she'll forgive her son, she thinks, if the universe is so cruel to him that he takes up magic and becomes her. because no one forgave her, no one, even when she had no choices.)

she could be good, but what is good in the end, but different definitions. if she razed the town to the ground and ended the day by ripping out snow white's heart once and for all, her mother without a heart might have said good job, sweetheart.

and with a heart? she doesn't know.

that night she has a cup of tea with her mother's murderer and just for a moment thinks about leaving town too.

"do you want any sugar?" mary margaret asks, all sympathetic doe eyes that used to make regina nauseous, but now only mildly bristle her. perhaps not even that.

"no thank you." she says with a half smile that doesn't reach her eyes, and imagines the evil queen scoffing in the mirror instead.

* * *

><p>the playground isn't occupied by anyone in the hours between 5 and 9, and so around sunset regina situates herself in one of the swings. it squeaks as it tries to remind her that swings are not for adults. she'd rather not a swing, but the forest is full of merry men, the town is full of charmings, and she is full of something, and this playground is the last place anyone would expect her to be. the yellow and pink sunset splashes over trees, casts her waning shadow over the wood chips below her.<p>

she stares at the plastic and metal (durable, safe) grey-silver castle structure and frowns at its hulking nature, its shadow considerably more defined than her own, the little triangular windows entirely too small. no wonder henry never liked to play here. it looks like a dungeon. but then again, what castle wasn't a dungeon to her?

(her own during her reign, but it was perhaps a dungeon to everyone else.)

she gives a long, full sigh, and she digs her fingernails into her palms. she'll be fine, soon, most likely. she's going to make lasagna tonight, and henry's helping. he's getting so tall. this past year has been anything but still. she'snever been still, not even close, because if she tried? well. if she ever did, then something would swallow her whole. she had to have eyes on the back of her head, even when sleeping.

regina is thirty-eight years old, twenty-nine years removed.

sometimes she feels like those still and then not still twenty-eight years swallowed part of her anyway.

and sometimes it didn't feel like that, like when henry called her mama for the first time and she said yes sweetheart, i'm your mama in a high, crooning voice she didn't even know was within her anymore. when emma swan said how in the hell did you get like this? it was an entire different story. henry's storybook would say she felt a lot of shame, a lot of sadness.

she supposed once it could be sadness, but this feeling was too old to be called that. too familiar, too fiery, too much to be weighed down like sadness does on one's chest. and shame? they'd love that, wouldn't they.

she laughs, and it's dry.

no it wasn't sadness, or shame. it was fury. at emma swan, for not knowing. at leopold, for treating her like his most precious object, not the child she was and had to leave behind in a stable. at snow white, for never understanding. at herself. for everything: failing, turning to the life her mother led when she swore she'd never, for all the hearts in her vault, for her own, because she had no choices except when she did: marian.

except when she didn't–

"regina?"

emma swan clears her throat.

regina mills sighs, but smiles anyway.

"working on that tracking spell?"

emma snorts, and goes to sit next to her. she immediately starts to twist together the two swing chords, and regina watches as she flings her legs out and the chords untangle, emma spinning, spinning, spinning. the last of the sunset catches the sunlight in her hair.

when she looks over at regina, she shakes her head and there's a familiar crooked smile on her lips. "i loved doing that as a kid."

(she doesn't have a word to explain emma swan and what regina feels about emma swan, and is starting to think she might never have one.)

emma finally settles in the swing set, and seems to slightly fold in on herself, rubs her gloved hands together in her lap. "actually henry sent me. he said, and i quote, 'mom's being broody, but pretending not to be at the playground again and we're supposed to be making dinner tonight. go cheer her up."

regina frowns. "i don't brood."

emma raises a brow. "i thought you'd be more offended at the idea of me being able to cheer you up." and because emma is an idiot with a death wish, she gently rocks to the side and nudges regina, who has to hide another smile.

she raises a brow of her own. "you're…..passing."

emma rolls her eyes. "thanks, madam mayor."

they sit in somehow companionable silence as they watch dusk created burned edges on the top of trees and houses, the sky turn empty.

"is it about robin?"

this time regina snorts. "i do have other things to 'brood' about than my love life."

emma sighs and stuffs her hands in her jacket pockets. "but is it?"

regina stares back at the castle. "no. and yes."

"be any more cryptic, and i'll start calling you rumpelstiltskin."

regina breathes out through her nose. "i was thinking about what the universe gives and what it takes, and how much of that…..ends up being your fault afterall."

emma blinks. "like…..the universe giving henry…..and taking robin….if you want to believe in this fate mumbo jumbo…..but?"

she lightly kicks the woodchips. "but regardless of all, we have choices, don't we? with what we do with the cards we're given, and who we become from those decisions."

emma's brows knit together and she stares right at regina. "it depends pretty hard on the cards we're dealt." she says, her voice a little rough on the edges.

"i didn't have to kill marian, i mean. the first time. i did it because–"

emma stops her. "why the explaining your less than stellar past all of a sudden? what happened to no regrets regina?"

regina shoots a her a glare. "nothing happened to her. i can't regret then because it led me to now, but i can be sorry that i had deprived a child of their mother because of my anger. no matter how legitimate my anger was and is."

(she declines to admit that she doesn't know who she is, hasn't for a very long time, clings to her many selves that feel like repelling magnets.)

emma is still looking at her, brows still knit, but she says nothing in response.

"i really don't ever brood. not like this, in any case. there's little point."

they watch as darkness fills the empty sky.

"my public defender was really shitty." emma finally says.

"what?"

"when i got arrested." emma starts twist the swing again, but not fully around. "he said i had a choice to steal those watches, and that i made the wrong one. he said he wasn't being paid enough to deal with teenage delinquents with anger problems."

regina's eyes narrow.

"anyway, he didn't even try to get me a lower sentence, and basically said how he thought my months in prison would teach me a good lesson or something. they taught me something alright: that i was alone, that it was my fault i was alone, and that i was never going to do right by this kid growing in me, and that i was always going to be alone."

regina, without really quite thinking about it, reaches out to press gentle fingers on her wrist. "emma–"

she stops twisting. "i have no idea what the fuck i'm saying because like you, i also rarely do this introspective crap, but...i'm here. you're here. we're both here, and henry's here, and i got a text from david asking if you'd like to come pet the dogs at the shelter so maybe. it's okay. it's okay that we don't have answers, only questions." emma swallows hard and stares at the woodchips for a few seconds before she brings her eyes up again to meet regina's.

she slides her hand into emma's. "i could be….agreeable to that."

emma covers her hand with her other one and gives her another lopsided smile. this time regina doesn't hold hers back. "sometimes here scares me, but–"

"we'll survive, because henry and i are making dinner. and you're invited."

emma's eyes shine and her smiles wobbles. "yeah?"

"yeah, ms. swan." she squeezes the hand underneath her own. "you are."


End file.
